U.S. News | Syrian Refugees

U.S. meets target of 10,000 Syrian refugee admissions

The White House announced that the 10,000th Syrian refugee had been scheduled for arrival a month before the end of the fiscal year, with Michigan and California topping the list of most popular destinations for arrivals.

The number of admissions is expected to be capped at 10,000 again for 2017, though plans have been announced to increase the number by a few thousand each year thereafter.

The number of admissions will be contingent upon the outcome of the 2016 national elections, with refugee admissions and immigration more broadly a controversial topic in the presidential campaigns.

Outlas Outreach

The Ongoing Insecurity of LGBT Ghanaians

A relatively stable constitutional democracy, Ghana has seen the beginnings of official outreach to its LGBT citizens in recent years as it has signed on to pro-LGBT international accords and treaties, but new research from Human Rights Watch (HRW) reveals ongoing persecution and gender-based vulnerabilities. Though rarely enforced, a law criminalizing same-sex relations that emerged from the country’s colonial legacy has led to the political and corporal endangerment of LGBT Ghanaians, exposing them to intimidation, violence, fears of public exposure, and little to no recourse to law enforcement protection. Lesbians, bisexual women, and trans men have faced especially high levels of violence and labor precarity, and anti–domestic violence laws have done little to protect them given the lack of trust in the legal system. In response, HRW conducted interviews with LGBT Ghanaians to track insecurity across a range of social, legal, and economic domains and issued a set of recommendations to improve protections for the community.